So Osama bin Laden breaks his radio silence with an audiotape. Experts tell us it seems to be real and it seems to be bin Laden himself. It makes reference to recent events so it is unlikely to have been recorded a long time ago.
My colleague Joe Conason will have a lengthier piece on this up later this evening. In the mean time, various press accounts have wondered why we are hearing but not seeing the al-Qaida leader. For instance, here’s Nicholas Kulish in the Wall St. Journal: “The qustion remains why, if Mr. bin Laden is alive, no videos have been released.”
One possibility, of course, is that bin Laden is ill and not in good enough shape to show his face — it would dishearten his faithful followers. But another possibility that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere is that bin Laden and company learned their lesson from their videotape releases of last fall.
As you may recall, Western experts analyzed the rock formations behind bin Laden and tried to figure out his location from every possible clue on screen. The choice of audio this time might be simple prudence. Bin Laden has managed to elude American pursuit thus far, and he is presumably even less eager to be located today than he was a year ago.
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